Winter brings an abundance of organic citrus varieties. Blood oranges, Star Ruby grapefruit and Satsumas, Fremont and Page mandarins are just a few of the good for you, juicy, delicious citrus varieties waiting for you.

Winter time brings a wide array of citrus varieties. Page, Fremont, Tango and Satsumas are just a few of the delicious sweet Mandarins available now. Blood Oranges, Star Ruby, Oro Blanco, Minneola and Cara Cara’s, the list goes on. Earl’s has all your citrus varieties!

The ELD trucking situation is more dramatic than anticipated. There is a lot more product that needs to be transported than trucks available. Some truckers have pulled their trucks out of service to get the ELD devices installed making the available carriers able to charge higher rates and are also less willing to pick up at multiple locations. Additionally, transit times have increased causing produce prices to go up and also to have an occasional gap in availability.

Electronic Logging Mandate Week One Recap:

Change is difficult. The first week of the new ruling requiring truckers to electronically log their hours using an electronic logging device, or ELD, is getting off to a bumpy start. The demand for trucking is still the same but supply of truck drivers is down. As a consequence we are experiencing fewer available trucks from the Pacific Northwest, Nogales, Yuma and the desert regions of California. Many truckers, particularly the independent operators waited until the very last minute to buy and activate the ELD and ran into some problems and delays getting the units installed or logging on to smartphone apps.

The new mandate is intended to cut down on accidents caused by fatigue from driving. Truck drivers are allowed 14 hours per day including driving time and waiting time at both the pickup and drop-off destinations. Once they reach those 14 hours they must take a 10 hour break before driving again. Additionally a weekly hourly limit has been imposed. As a result, we are seeing in some cases what used to take 2 days for a truck load to arrive at Earl’s dock now take 3 days. Less trucks and longer transit time translates into increased truck rates.

Change takes time and we expect the situation to improve gradually during the next few weeks as everyone becomes comfortable with the new system. Trucks have until April to install the device or they run the risk of being pulled from the road. We are working hard to make sure our customers don’t have to deal with any disruptions.